REVISED: Heroic Madness of Deathwing Hunter Tips for 5.0.4

With one raiding week left, Blizzard has made Heroic Madness much easier.  Previous to 5.0.4 it wasn't a cake-walk but it was one of the easiest fights.  Immediately after 5.0.4 it was almost impossible for some 10man raid makeups because of bugs.

It's not clear if they fixed all the bugs or if they just nerfed around the edges.  The bloods start out as normal moving mobs and appear to be slow-able still; It isn't clear if they made everyone's slows work again.  Pet pathing issues are fixed as far as I'm concerned; I didn't have my pet run out of range and dismiss himself on almost every platform.

There are many bugged issues with the current Heroic Madness of Deathwing encounter.  Slowing the bloods still may or may not be a bugged encounter issue.  There were always reports of some slows still working.  We used everything that we could.  Because nobody ever got failure messages in previous bugged attempts we have no idea which -- possibly all -- worked.  We can hope that it gets fixed soon if it isn't already.

I used a completely new talent and glyph setup just for this fight.  I expect that phrase will become cliche in MoP.  We had way more DPS than we needed for the fight, so pulling back on some was an easy choice.  Everything about the spec is to defeat the bloods that heal Deathwing ASAP:

1. Glyph of No Escape and Ice Trap - not sure if the traps slowed them but it's the obvious choice.
2. Binding Shot Talent - also not sure if it worked or not, but I always shot it.  I finally got an immune message on this.
3. Thrill of the Hunt Talent - totally can change your rotation but excellent for more multi-shots.
4. Lynx Rush Talent - great for bloods if you don't have focus available.

EDITED TO ADD: At this point it's not worth really taking #3 and #4.  It can help, but with #3, SV is contending with the 5.0.4 bug that has the instantaneous damage from multishot's serpent spread serpent stings not being applied.  Lynx Rush can help with a little bit and really aMoCs isn't really useful on this fight.  But now the bloods move reasonably slow so you can steady/cobra between multi-shots anyway.

Add to that list these standards:

1. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera Talent - I disengage on this fight a surprising amount.  I don't recommend it -- and I probably could argue myself out of doing it.  Except I'd still do it.  But you don't take this talent for the disengage.  Use it for deterrence when you get infected with a blood or when you get targeted with shrapnel - the Dream was bugged last Thursday.
2. Aspect of the Iron Hawk Talent - The standard PvE talent if there was one.
3. Glyph of Deterrence - 50% damage reduction is a nice thing when you're infected with the blood.  You have to pop deterrence on the last platform if you get infected and if you've got your cancel aura set up then you should pop it every time you get infected.  It's only a couple seconds of downtime and takes a lot of sweat off the healers.

You do a surprising amount of standing around doing nothing on Deathwing's platform between each 5% round.

It feels quite rewarding to have finished a tier - albeit terribly nerfed - within that tier.  I suppose not being able to use Dream for Corruption tanking and Shrapnel -- and having incredibly difficult to slow bloods -- compensated for that nerf.  We never had DPS or healing issues.  It would have been more interesting to have those challenges. ;-)

EDITED TO ADD: It still feels rewarding to kill heroic madness.  Some of it is that I've only done it four times so far.  Some of it is that we're cycling in more and more new people for the kills.  And we're challenging ourselves to do it in different rainbow orders to help some other people get more achievements.

Our Madness

Our guild took down Heroic Spine for the first time on Monday.  Then 5.0.4 landed on Tuesday.  Then we took down everything including Heroic Spine on Wednesday in two hours (we wiped in a few weird places for weird reasons).  We put in two attempts on Wednesday on Heroic Madness but the bloods kicked our ass.  Then Thursday we hit Heroic Madness again.  For three hours.  We couldn't understand a lot of why things just weren't working.  We even got him down to 6% once.  Finally we noticed that it really was broken.  It was nice to think we weren't idiots.  Here's how broken it is:

• Bloods come out every 5% of Deathwing's health.  If they get to him, they heal him significantly.  None of our group's multiple slows worked on the bloods on the final platform.  Hunter, DK, Rogue, Mage, and Druids.  No immune messages or the like.  They just bee-lined to Deathwing and healed him with us just getting frustrated.
• Dream didn't do anything against Corruptions or Shrapnel.
• Hunter pets disappear from doing long distance pathing to things not a long distance away.  (Not the Kill Command bug.)   I also saw my pet in the water behind a corruption on the third platform instead of attacking from the side (on ground).  This is manageable as DPS isn't really any problem.
• We had two people with lag.  One was playing with hotel internet.  So while this was nice, it was also nuts: We were also able to get more than one battle rez off in a 10man.

                               

ROFLSTOMP DS and Shot Priority Complexity

Ten of us managed to update/change our addons, select and learn our talents and glyphs, reforge our gear and try to raid.  We started our raid a little late but in a little over two hours we learned that some people don't know how their character works now and some do.  We also learned that a 35% nerf to DS can overcome everything.  We cleared everything on heroic up to and including spine.  We took two people who weren't in our original heroic spine group before and got it on our third second attempt.  Not that the heroic spine fight is exactly the same anymore.  Because of the cleansing changes -- and despite the raid mechanic changes -- you have to cheese the cleansing a little with positioning, but it was probably easier that way originally too.

As a Survival hunter, I found that if I did my old rotation employing all the previously known spells (SrS, BA, ArS, ExS) I did significantly less damage.  When I added in Dire Beast and aMoCs I was coming close.  When I threw in Rapid Fire and Readiness I had the ability to burst.  I didn't realize how much I missed the ability to burst.  I didn't even need to use the valor trinket to feel like a king.  I like my wow 5.0 talents and glyphs.  I really like the defensive attributes around Deterrence (100%/50% resist and 1min CD).  Marked for Death isn't a bad thing either.

Now all of this is a much bigger job.  Much more complexity!  I look at that with approval.  If better hunters can do more in a better way and get more damage that's a good thing.

If you think of A Murder of Crows as a DoT, you can also think of Dire Beast and even your own pet as DoTs.  Add SrS, BA, and even ExS and you've got six DoTs.  Thankfully, you don't really need a bar to watch your pet (though honestly they're pretty complex).  Our biggest DoT (ExS) doesn't need to be watched anymore thanks to how they can all be dumped in as fast as is smart.  Still we have many more DoTs and cooldowns to watch.

I put together a pretty nice NeedToKnow configuration to watch all this stuff, which I'll share in another post soon.

Down to the Wire

With only a few hours until wow-5.0 lands and everyone has to re-learn their character abilities...

Heroic Spine Hunter Macro

There is an odd situation with targeting the Burning Tendons via a macro on Heroic Spine in DS.  /target Burning Tendons will not work under a variety of situations.  I have a bunch of hypotheses as to why.  But there is a simple solution which is rumored to always work: /target boss2.

Below is the macro I'm going to be using now:

#showtooltip
/target boss2
/cast Hunter's Mark
/use Kiroptyric Sigil
/petattack

/cast Call of the Wild

There are some very nice DPS tweaks for hunters already listed at the Wow Hunter's Hall.  At this point, I think that swapping our stat-stick is a bit agressive and unnecessary given the substantial nerfs to DS now.  I'll stay SV.  I will most likely do the pet dismiss rotation.

Looking at Heroic Spine

This week we got a good raid together two nights and got Heroic Warmaster down.  The random fire is a bit annoying but it wasn't anywhere as bad as I thought it might be.  I think it was a total of 50 some wipes.  That was a nice change from being defeated by the Summer Attendance Boss.

We poked heroic spine a few times with barely any prep.  I lamely pieced together a macro to save a second or two on damaging the tendon (below). I plan to stick some other pet abilities in there.

#showtooltip
/target Burning Tendons
/cast Hunter's Mark
/use Kiroptyric Sigil
/petattack

It seems that there isn't too much specific that ranged DPS needs to do.  Burn the tentacles quickly in order.  Nuke the bloods when we're gonna flip.  Drop the almag and free the grip right as it happens... but time it so the almag doesn't reveal the tendon too early.   Then burn the tendon with as much crap ton damage as possible.

Is there anything specific a hunter can or should do?

See here for a macro.

Heroic Hagara for Hunters - with macros!

Heroic Hagara presents a lot of good reasons to bring a hunter.  But it does take a lot of work.  As a hunter you can do things right and make the encounter a lot easier.  You can also do things wrong and wipe the raid.

Speaking generally, she took us more work to get down in 10man than she should have.  (She was our fifth heroic boss downed.)  We had two fundamental strat issues that we didn't have right and that made it incredibly difficult.  (More about those issues at the bottom.) Of course along the way we did a lot of things right.  So while I have only been killing her for three weeks I have a lot of practice with the hunter pieces.


Hunter Duties in the Boss-Tank Phase

In this phase you should be a normal ranged DPS.  You still have to think.  Spread out for better beam coverage.  Coordinate and do a beam dance with another ranged.  Get out at 2 stacks.  You'll likely pick up 1-3 more as you're trying to escape.  Get back in immediately when your stacks drop.  If you're targeted by all the beams, move to minimum range of the boss so others can more easily cover beams targeting you.  If you're targeted for an Ice Tomb, move to the assigned position for tombs.  This is normally not right behind Hagara.  It is often to the side.  You want melee to easily free you and still dps Hagara.  But Ice Tombs create a line-of-sight block and you don't want to make healers move 30 yards just to heal the tank.


Hunter Duties in the Frost Phase

When the frost phase starts you should flip on Aspect of the Pack.  It's also nice if you have the  Glyph of Aspect of the Pack which extends the pack by 15 yards.  Pack aspect will not cause stuns in this phase.  Your group will love you.

You also need to do two things with your pet.  First, you need to call it back to you.  I have the default setup and hit control-2.  If you don't then your pet will die from watery entrenchment while attacking Hagara.  You also don't want it going back to attacking Hagara after downing a binding crystal.  The second thing you want to do with your pet is to have it always attacking a binding crystal even if you can't.  Your pet will not be affected by the ice wall and can survive cutting through the middle zone of watery entrenchment.  The pet just can't stay in there.

Generally we will have melee start on one binding crystal and have range on the next one out, but we keep everyone together.  We move as a group and have people affected by the frost flake stacking slow debuff dip into the middle area.  Once inside we cleanse them.  If they are cleansed while they have the watery entrenchment debuff that you get for stepping in the middle then no slow trap area is created when they're cleansed.  If you have the stacking slowing debuff and it's not being cleansed and you have entrenchment, then you can cleanse it yourself with Master's Call.  You can do this for others if you're handy with Master's Call.  Generally, you want to leave this to healers.

You want to always be DPS'ng crystals.  Use kiting angles to move and fire.  You are the leader and make sure that the rest of the raid keeps up with you.  You'll want to stop and fire steadies or cobras.  Make your movement clear.  Melee tends to want to stay on a crystal too long.  Yell at them.

Various times you may find it useful to hang back.  If you only have one crystal or if too many people have fallen behind.  It is fine to dip into the middle to dodge the ice wall.  You just don't want to do it too often.  You can also disengage through the ice wall.  This is pretty dicey and unforgiving though.  Neither your start or end position can be in the wall or you'll take the massive damage.  You also have to factor in the latency of your connection.

After the frost phase ends you really really want to flip out of Aspect of the Pack.  I hit my DPS power-up while she's stunned with the 100% damage bonus.  This includes a flip to Aspect of the Hawk.  Here it is:

#showtooltip
/use Kiroptyric Sigil
/cast !Aspect of the Hawk
/petassist
/petattack [@target,harm]
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Rabid
/cast Roar of Courage
/cast Furious Howl
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Hunter Duties in the Lightning Phase in 10 Man Heroic

The lightning phase is boring if you're not chaining lightning.  Chain lightning!

When the phase starts you need to do some pet micro-management.  You do not want your pet by your side or anywhere near the elemental or charging conductor.  You also want to flip to Aspect of the Wild to lessen the damage from the lightning.  Attacking Hagara will not cause her any damage but it also will not cause any damage to your pet.  It's a good way to get the pet out of the way.  I was surprised that I could reduce it all to one macro (which I have some crazy lightning as the icon):

/petpassive
/petattack [target=Hagara]
/cast !Aspect of the Wild

This switches your pet to passive so the pet doesn't attack your target or attack any target that is attacking you.  It also has the pet get out of the way by attacking Hagara.  And of course flipping on some protection from lightning.  It does work in only one click.

Click the macro and DPS the elemental.  Make sure not to be in the path of the chaining in case one of the storm pillar AoE [missiles] comes down on you.  You'll need to run that path.  After the storm pillar lands move into position to chain the lightning.  You and your teammate keep a good spacing and chain half of it and keep going until you meet the other team.  You can use deterrence for some meager damage reduction. It doesn't affect the chaining.  Your pet can chain the lightning as well, so you really want it out of the way.  It's not an efficient way to speeding anything up.  It will just add damage to you.

After the chaining is done and Hagara is free to be attacked, reset your pet and your aspect.  I do this via my DPS power-up macro (same as above).




Fundamental Strat Issues in 10 Man Heroic

Our first fundamental strat issue was that we originally never tanked her towards the edge with the only thing on her front 180 degrees being the tank.  (With the beams to her rear of course.)  We had tanked her in the middle. We do the beam partner dance okay but stacks of 5 and an Ice Lances will often kill.

Our second fundamental strat issue was how we linked the lightning.  In heroic 10man there are EIGHT crystal conductors.  In normal 10, normal 25, LFR, and heroic 25 there are only FOUR.  So there weren't many strats for this that we could look up.  You do have to run a lot to chain it.  What we had been doing was using four teams of two linking the lightning.  We'd pre-position two groups at the left and right back second set of conductors and have two groups chain the first four conductors.  Then the second teams kick in.  The theory being they'd take too much damage if it was the same.  Well it turns out that it's a lot easier if you just have two groups of two work clockwise and counter-clockwise respectively.  Healing can be more concentrated on those four and if you want, you can use three healers and let them focus on healing instead of chaining.  There are many tricks here (blink, sprint, heroic leap, disengage), but you don't need tricks to get it done very quickly.

Our third issue -- though nothing we did wrong in particular -- was that we would often have different tanks with different abilities.  During Hagara's focused assault it is nice to GTFO of it.  In heroic you can't just back up.  So with our warrior tank, she'd have a heroic leap, intervene, and defensive CDs.  Our feral would generally just have the defensive CDs.  Our DK would have a huge blood shield and defensive CDs.  The warrior had lots of options, but re-positioning after was an issue for the ice lances.  Additionally, we'd have help from the raid.  Beyond the normal bubbles and what-not, we'd have a priest pull them out of it and have a holy paladin taunt.  Spam heals in 10mans just don't guaranty the tank will live.  So far it seems like the DK tank is the most easy to keep up.  Raid support is just gravy.



Postscript

You can tell which phase (Lightning or Frost) she will send you to by the magic on her axes during her normal tank phase.  They'll either crackle with lightning or a cool frost.

Cataclysm Raiding: Tired or Wired

Wednesday night we kicked off our raiding week.

I picked up "OS" off-spec gear.  I take it when nobody else needs it for their main spec or off-spec.  I got three pieces.  Heroic pieces.  I am upgrading 397 tier pet-tanking gear to heroic 410 pet-tanking gear.  /face-palm?

We raided and one-shot the first three bosses on heroic and then two-shot Hagara.  It was only our third kill of her.  We had previously done everything right except a for two things that seem like they shouldn't be an issue.  1) We didn't previously have the boss positioned on the edge facing away from everyone except the tank.  Ice lances used to shred us.  2) We used to have eight people chain the lightning (in four groups of two).  It is far, far, simpler to have two groups of two chain the whole thing, one working clockwise and one working counter-clockwise.  I'm always one of the four and enjoy when my group does one or two more than the other group.  Oh, and your pet can help or hurt chaining you.  I have a how-to I need to share for heroic Hagara.

After Hagara and Ultraxion, we realized we only had 45mins to try hitting heroic Blackhorn.  We also realized the other two raid nights had no tanks available.  So we all logged onto our alts and finished the instance in normal mode.

I have to say it was quite fun and enjoyable.  But I'm not sure if I'm tired or wired.

The Madness of Deathwing Bow Is Really Good

Yesterday I got the Heroic Horrifying Horn Arbalest off of Zon'ozz.  It's a item level 410 weapon with over one thouuuussand base damage per second.  My current bow from Normal Madness is only 939 base damage per second.  So I do a little happy-dance, slap on a woodchucker scope, and transmorg it into a gun.

Then something gives a little tug at the back of my mind.  "Is it actually better?"

I hit up femaledwarf.com and plug in everything revert the weapon and... it looks to make my dps better by 0.081%.  Yes. Notice the decimal point?  That's not even one-tenth of one percent better.  And this is of course factoring in all the perfect buffs and debuffs.  Without that perfection the margin would be even smaller.  It is also not taking any movement into account.  At all.  With the movement the proc DoT from the Madness of Deathwing bow will tick while I move.  The higher item level crossbow will not do much.  So if Zeherah's summary modeling of the proc is good, then the Madness bow is better.

High-End Stat Sticks

Last week we killed Yor'sahj on heroic for the second week.  As long as healers are coordinated with the purple ooze, stacking is pinpoint, mana CDs are used on the first mana void (and it's kept around as a battery), and DPS keep their powder dry for black phases it isn't too bad.  Note to hunters: only fire a black arrow while on your way to kill an ooze if it's a black ooze phase.  Any time after that and you'll be missing an explosive trap.

A nice stat stick dropped.  I was toting Kiril and our feral tank wasn't yet, so I passed.  Next time it rolls in I'll have to decide if it's an upgrade or if it goes into my pet-tanking set.

I did some proc/stat analysis of Kiril earlier this month.  It looks like the polearm yields 514 agility plus 249 for the average proc buff.  No other stats.  So 763 agility.  The heroic staff gives you 529 agility, plus a 50 agility gem, plus a 10 agility socket bonus, and 675 points in non-ideal secondary stats.  If we add up the agility and consider the secondary stats to be only 1/3rd as valuable as agility this staff comes out with 814 "agility equivalent points".  The enchants would cancel each other out.  Which means the heroic staff can be thought of as about 51 agility better.

51 agility isn't bad, but it isn't huge.  This especially true since the proc benefit may be greater and the ability to adequately re-forge secondary stats may not be ideal.

Blazing Saddles

Heroic Ultraxion 10man for Hunters

Earlier this week we downed Heroic Ultraxion.  It's not news of any sort, but I thought I'd share some tips and tricks I learned along the way.  Next week Dragon Soul gets the 10% nerf so more guilds may be attempting it.  Here's my hunter view on the fight and the differences from normal.

Taking Turns with Hour of Twilight
Instead of just one tank staying in for Hour of Twilight, two people must stay in in heroic-10.  When/if a player stays in, they get a debuff which will insta-kill them if they stay in again.  The debuff lasts two mins, which means that you need six people taking the hour of twilights in a cycle in groups of two.  What's great for hunters, is that we have an AMAZING ability with deterrence.  It is available every two mins AND it prevents ALL damage.  That combination isn't that common.  That means you want to step up and do it.

Hitting Deterrence or the Heroic Will Button
Ultraxion's cast time for Hour of Twilight in heroic is much faster.  It goes from five seconds in normal to only three seconds in heroic.  If you have much latency you'll see it as two seconds.  What this means is that you always need to be ready to hit the right button.  Initially, you'll want to just hit it immediately.  After you get comfortable with your timing, you can slip in an extra shot and cut it closer.  But no matter what, you can't be surprised by it.  Know that it's coming and be ready before it's there.

If it's your turn to stay in and deterrence then you should know when the hour of twilight is coming and you should either have a double-stop-cast deterrence macro, or you shouldn't have any long casts that could delay your deterrence.

Thankfully, the Heroic Will button will cancel any cast.

Note: you should only use Deterrence if your raid[leader] tells you to or if you're in the rotation.

Fading Light
The fading light debuff will affect two dps and one tank in heroic-10 -- instead of just one dps and one tank.  This means you have a good chance of taking a fading light.  To make it more fun, the debuff no longer starts from between five and ten second before it insta-kills you.  It seems to start between three and seven seconds.  If I'm playing with 250ms latency it seems to start at two seconds because of the rounding that occurs with debuffs.

Again to address this, you always need to be ready for fading light.  Don't wait for it to reach zero.  Watch DBM for the timers and be ready.  Don't let this screw up a follow-on deterrence or second heroic will.  There is a situation that can rarely occur;  Heroic will has a 5sec CD so it is possible for it be on CD if fading light and hour of twilight occur closely.  In that case make sure to fade for fading light a little early.

When to DPS: Before the First Twilight
There are no fading lights before the first twilight occurs.  Lay into him and blow CDs.  Prepot.  Whatever you can do.  The fight is over five minutes, so Rapid Fire away. It it pure dps with no interruptions.  Since everyone is in-phase and not interrupted, we found it a nice time to hero.  This is the only time to get dps tunnel vision.

When to DPS: Trinkets
If you have on-use trinkets there are times when you'll want to defer using them for five seconds or so. A good time to hit them is right after a twilight.  For the 1.5min trinket this aligns nicely.  You just don't want to have that lovely dps burst interrupted.

When to DPS: Through and After a Twilight/Fading Light
Once you have the heroic will down, you can start to lay in more shots.  As SV you'll have a few options.  The biggest thing is that you want your DoTs to keep rolling while you're not there.  If you have the option to slightly clip an Explosive Shot's DoT right before fading, you should.  If the consequence is to greatly clip the DoT, then don't!

Fading Lights can be very quick.  I was able to pretty easily always fade with less than two seconds left on the debuff.  If DoTs are ticking so much the better.  But Hour of Twilight is a little bit longer of a dps hiatus.  The boss has the casting bar and then it doesn't actually occur until the wave passes over the group.  And it's whereever on the platform the group could be.  Then and only then do you come back to the twilight.

If you are deterrencing for an hour of twilight, you must have a cancel aura macro on hand.  Do the deterrence; wait for the wave to pass over you; cancel the deterrence; hit every dps CD you have and slam into him.  You'll have a second or more of extra dps that you wouldn't have if you had faded.

Surviving
This is a dps race.  You're doing this with two healers and some smattering of other health and healing abilities.  But you need to survive.  Until about 4.5mins into the fight it's all about proper execution.  Some time after that point it becomes about dps'ng while helping the healers.  When you notice everyone's health really low, consider helping the healers keep you up.

Hunters don't have group damage reduction CDs, but they can cheaply help themselves.  If you're a Dwarf, you can have eight seconds of 10% damage reduction.  When you're DPS'ng from the stairs in a nice tight group, hunters can both attack as melee and range.  Don't pass up a big DPS but if it's only an Arcane Shot vs staying alive, go with staying alive.  Smack a glyphed raptor strike.  Healthstones are also a nice thing to chew at that time.  If you somehow fell into bringing a pet for some buff (it better pay off!) who can intervene now's the time to use it on the active tank.

Loot
The kill can net you the heroic chest, bracers, and another shot at the trinket and ring.  In sadness, please note that the ring is both laden with expertise and best in slot.  For the record: I won the chest this past week.  I have passed (for the moment) on the ring for rogues and ferals.

How to Resist Cabin Fever

Lately there has been a lot of fading interest in our noted lame duck period.  Our latest patch gave hunters our spots -- or at least a chance at our spots -- on the DPS charts again.  Giving deterrence a damage reduction for things they choose it not to affect was a clear winner as well.  But we're still here in a winter dole-drum.  So what is there to do?  Below is how I've been resisting cabin fever.

Talents
I changed my specs.  I flipped from a Marksman PvE and Marksman PvP combo to a Survival PvE talent spec and a Pet-Tank BM.  I spent a total of about twenty minutes feverishy making macros, adjusting my NeedToKnow bars, and practicing a rotation that uses Arcane Shot.  Then I did it all over again with BM.  I've run all of four bosses on Normal with SV so don't ask me too many questions about my experience.

Raiding
We've been knocking over normal Dragon Soul for a while.  This week will be our third or fourth week of Morchok on heroic.  We played around and got a bunch of achievements.  But we've had some serious tank shortages.  One night zero tanks.  Another night, we did way more than you're supposed to be able to do with just one tank.  However, this puts heroic progression on the back-burner.

BM Pet Tanking
Our tank shortage is one of the reasons I chose BM as a pet-tank spec.  Normally, you'd want to use Marksman for self-heal in solo'ng older instances.  Well, I'm thinking it might not be bad to try some raid pet-tanking if the need arises.  I'm happy to have BM back; and along with it all my exotic pets that I have missed for a long time.  It is a wonderful thing to have a giant red dinosaur named Chuckles chomping the bad guys.

Loots
My ten man raid group has a feral druid, rogue, and myself all vying for agility stuff.  Of the countless weeks, only one agility trinket has dropped and only one agility ring has dropped.  Meanwhile strength and intelligence rings and trinkets have been disenchanted for weeks.  I am in pretty nice shape in other regards. I scored the first polearm.  And I have a full second set of Tier-13 gear gem'd, enchanted, and transmorg'd just for pet-tanking.

Achievements
I have three long-standing achievements that I've been working on.  For a long time.  One is to get my rep to Exalted with as many groups as possible.  I've been at a large number for a long while and have had "the Exalted" title for a while.  But there have always been a few lurking at the edges.  I haven't finished the seal people in Wrath.  I never did the Netherwing in Burning Crusade.  And I never touched the Darkmoon Faire because it was truly insane.  I have a strong desire not to grind the hell out of my brain and make my eyes bleed.   Well.  Until now.  My second and third long-standing achievements are the collection of mounts and non-combat pets.  I got a neat little addon to show me all the things I'm missing.  Well, now I'm grinding out Netherwing.  In three days I'm already Revered.  (Thankfully, I held on to the Black Temple portal neck piece! Still a long way to go, but it isn't as bad as I had feared.  Certainly not as bad as it was years ago.  And of course, I'm getting the max number of fair tokens (and associated rep) so I can purchase both mounts.  I already have the strider and am a little shy of the bear.  I also slid into doing the Elder holiday.  Following that I'm finding myself pulled into the hearts holiday.  I had avoided that stuff like the plague before.  But now I have the pets and think the achievements might not be bad either.  Help me.  This is clearly a disease.  Somehow I'm smiling about it.

Radical Re-tuning of Rotations

My guild cleared Deathwing (normal 10) back before Christmas, but because of poor raid and LFR drop luck I only got my 4pc T13 last week.  I had previously been dancing T12x2 and T13x2.  T13x4 is a different world.  But T13x2 is a completely different world from T12.

I'm not sure it's something that can be easily modeled for calculating dps differences.  Sure, we can and should still use femaledwarf.com to work on "what's better", but we may need to put in some assumptions and take things with a bit more salt.

The crazy part of having T13x2 is that as a MM hunter doing hard-cast AiS, you sometimes do shot fragments like this:

CS -> AiS -> SS -> SS -> AiS -> AiS -> SS -> CS -> SS -> SS -> AiS -> AiS -> SS -> SS -> [repeat]

MM rarely if ever did anything like that because focus wasn't available to do much of any value except another SS.  And you really wanted to do that second SS to keep the improved steady shot up.

Well so in walks the 4pc T13 and the proc is very very good.  I find I am compelled to get the T13x4 to proc.  Again, I play MM and previous to 4pc would do a great deal of hard-cast AiS -- basically any time except when on the move or on trash that would die too soon.  But now I'm doing different even more weird shot fragments like:

CS -> AS -> AS -> SS -> SS -> AS -> AS -> AS -> AS -> SS -> SS -> [repeat]

until I get a proc and then I switch into hard-cast AiS.

While I list "rotations" or "priorities", the coming of T13 turns all of that on its head.  MM has many priorities.  Keep the sting up, use chimera, maintaining ISS, and getting that T13x4 proc.  When you add in movement and game mechanics, it really can't be called anything other than nuts.

One essential item for all hunters is having a very visible hunter focus bar front and center.  If you don't have one you need to get one.  Here are a few that do it for you (in my order of preference):

• Serenity
• Hunter Got Focus
• HuntBars
• HunterFocusBar
• EnergyWatch Reborn

Uncovering The Cloak Problem

Cloaks do not drop in the Dragon Soul raid.  There are a whole bunch of cloaks that are Firelands tier or better which we might have.  But really only three of them look good.  (And I don't mean for transmogrification.)  Those three are the following:

1: Lord Rhyolith's Dreadfire Drape.  It's old Firelands and item level 378.

2: Lord Rhyolith's Heroic Dreadfire Drape.  It's pretty pimped at item level 391.

3: The Batwing Cloak.  It sounds great and has the highest item level at 397.

Okay so what's the problem to uncover?  They all do look pretty good.  They do, but the Batwing Cloak has less agility than not just the heroic FL cloak, but the normal FL cloak drop.  If we assume non-heroic gemming, then the stats work out like this:

1: Lord Rhyolith's Dreadfire Drape: 312 agility, 138 hit, 95 mastery

2: Lord Rhyolith's Heroic Dreadfire Drape: 341 agility, 158 hit, 113 mastery

3: The Batwing Cloak: 301 agility, 162 crit, 176 haste

Agility aside for a moment; The trick here is that the Rhyolith cloaks are laden with mastery, while the valor cloak has large amounts of good crit and haste.   My napkin math says the valor has 338 points of good secondary stats, while the normal Rhyolith cloak has only 138 hit, 57 mastery, and 38 crit ... call it maybe 200 good points.  So we have a difference of -11 agility and +140 good secondary stats if we use the valor cloak.  The highest item level agility cloak has the least amount of agility.  Agility is our primary stat and generally worth 3x "crit/haste stats".  Because 33 is less than 140, then it is of some benefit to upgrade to the valor cloak.  It certainly isn't something to do any time soon.

The heroic Rhyolith cloak however is something to write home about.  The biggest issue here is that heroic Rhyolith is a pain in the ass.  The napkin math looks like trading -40 agility to get around +85 secondary.  Because 120 is not less than 85, the valor cloak is not even close.

The mediocrity of the Batwing Cloak is shown a bit more if heroic gems are used, but the results are the same.  Upgrading to it from a Dreadfire Drape is either a very low priority, or a bad move.

The Raiding Hunter's Valor Ring Upgrade!

The valor ring, mastery aside, looks quite nice.  It is a good deal and a great item for most hunters.  For the population of hunters possessing the exaulted-with-Firelands ring, upgrading it is not very compelling.

The FL ring: 286 agility, 181 haste, 134 mastery.
The valor ring: 291 agility, 184 haste, 148 mastery.

Now of course you can use two rings!  But if you've got a nice raid or LFR drop then you may have a better place to spend valor.

Ultraxion Post-Kill Notes Considering Making it Easier

Apologies if you're looking for a strategy guide.  This is a musing look at making Ultraxion easier for me next time.

I know I wasn't dps'ng at 100% efficiency on the kill.  I could have been doing more things in the seconds right before needing to click the button... but it wasn't a safe option.  Especially when the Fading Light debuff sometimes started at only 5sec and was hidden behind buffs.  I could probably get a bit more dps out with practice.   1-5K dps maybe.  But there are other safer options.

One would be: I could reduce my dps but bring a cunning pet that increases spell damager's dps (via  Lightning Breath). The cat or wolf does 3.1k dps and has direct synergy with me.  A cat brings buffs like Roar of Courage, that may be covered elsewhere -- and a wolf brings Furious Howl.  But I could lessen some of the damage with a few Roars of Sacrifice... though probably the only the last one toward the end of the fight is needed.  I don't know what this will come out to be dps-wise.  We'd have to check all the buffs.  More to figure out... and it'll vary based on raid makeup.

Another idea: ensure everyone is back in shadow before heroism is fired off.  (+2K dps)  I know I missed it at least on one attempt.  The kill graph looks like my dps went down during heroism compared to everyone else.  So I'm thinking it happened and I missed it.

Another idea: don't have a dps die and need a brez (+2K dps)  We frequently had dps die because they watched Deadly Boss Mods timers or screamed wrong things in their ears.  Make sure DBM is up to date and realize that the timers only show when an ability is about to start casting.

Another idea: cycle in people with various 100% defensive CDs.  Deterrence looks to mitigate 100%, so they could stay in instead of a tank taking damage which needs healing.  Pallys could bubble, etc.

Yet another this-time crazy idea: Go with two healers.  Healing is "light" until the last third of the fight.  Bring a person who can do some reasonable dps in the first 2/3rds of the fight and then start healing (with the third crystal's help).  The extra damage might mean far less time in healing-hell time.

Progression

I'm kinda thankful that our progression slowed down a bit.  In one night, we were 4/8 in DS 10man normal.  The second night, and we're now 5/8.  We "only" got one new boss down and a bunch of tries on the gunship.  If we went too fast this would be gone in a flash.  And the heroic versions don't look too fun.  That said, the gunship doesn't look too hard.